Two Koreas To Re-Open Kaesong In Trial Run

South Korea's Unification Ministry said on Wednesday (September 11) that North and South Korea have agreed to re-open a shuttered industrial park on a trial basis starting on Monday (September 16), in a sign of a further thaw between two countries that remain technically at war.

The deal was made around a month after the two sides agreed to resume operations at their troubled joint industrial park with a series of talks on the fate of the rivals' last symbol of economic cooperation.

The two Koreas will also attract foreign investors, a key foreign currency earner for the North, into the zone in October, the ministry said.

North Korea shut down the factories, a few miles from the two Korea's heavily armed border, in April, pulling out all 53,000 of its workers and banning South Korean firms from crossing the border with supplies at the height of nuclear tensions between the two sides.

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened strikes with nuclear and other missiles against the South and the United States after the United Nations imposed toughened sanctions on the North for its third nuclear test in February.

The reopening of the Kaesong project is seen as meeting the political interest of the democratic South, one of the world's richest countries, and the economic interest of the North.